High court challenge to NDAA martial law plan –

“After the string of black Suburbans pulls away, it is difficult to believe that the military would provide relatives or lawyers with any information whatsoever as to where the person being detained was being held.”

WASHINGTON – Most people have no idea that within days, they could be rounded up by U.S. military troops, held without bond – or charges – unable to communicate with family or friends, and without the benefit of counsel following the Supreme Court’s refusal to review what a panel of activists have labeled a “clearly unconstitutional” version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2014.

The 2014 version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) will grant the President unconstitutional authority to “arrest, kidnap, detain without trial and hold indefinitely” American citizens thought to “represent an enduring security threat to the United States,” according to lawyers who are pressing the Supreme Court to change their minds.

A blue ribbon panel of plaintiffs spearheaded by journalist Chris Hedges filed a friend of the court brief that asserts, “If this court refuses to hear the Hedges Challenge, it will leave American citizens subject to unconstitutional military arrest and detention.” Their rank includes such luminaries as Daniel Ellsberg, Jennifer Bolen, Noam Chomsky, Alex O’Brien, Kai Warg All, Brigitta Jonsottir and the political action group “Day of Rage.”

The terms are actually that vague. That is despite what the president himself said at the time of the middle-of-the-night hurry up session that passed the law to start with. “It’s clearly unconstitutional,” Hedges says of the bill. “It is a huge and egregious assault against our democracy. It overturns over 200 years of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing.”

Although President Barack Hussein Obama made palliative noises at the time, “Simply stating that means it could be interpreted as the contrary,” according to veteran journalist Bob Unruh, of “World Net Daily.”

The law would authorize executive actions similar to the 1944 detention of Japanese-Americans and confiscation of their property and goods.

In the Second U.S. Circuit of Appeals, justices overturned a ruling of the trial court in the Southernn District of New York when the trial court, on Sept. 12, 2012, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District Court of New York ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and placed a permanent injunction on the indefinite detention provision.

Obama then appealed, and the 2nd Circuit authorized the government detention program.

Since the law passed, multiple states have passed laws banning its enforcement. Herb Titus, a constitutional expert, previously told news outlets that Forrest’s ruling underscored “the arrogance of the current regime, in that they will not answer questions that they ought to answer to a judge because they don’t think they have to.”

The judge explained that the plaintiffs alleged paragraph 1021 is “constitutionally infirm, violating both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment as well due process rights guaranteed by the 5th Amendment.”

She noted the government “did not call any witnesses, submit any documentary evidence or file any declarations.”

“It must be said that it would have been a rather simple matter for the government to have stated that as to these plaintiffs and the conduct as to which they would testify, that [paragraph] 1021 did not and would not apply, if indeed it did or would not,” she wrote.